In the Minds of Hot Wheels Collectors

Cash, Love, and Tiny Cars: Inside the obsessive-compulsive world of Hot Wheels collectors.

And there’s puckish, 48-year-old real-estate broker Bruce Pascal from Washington, D.C., who, in addition to being a walking toy-car wiki and a member of the Diecast Hall of Fame, is famous for owning the most expensive Hot Wheels ever purchased: a pink 1969 VW Bus for which he’s said to have paid about $70,000 in 2000. While he suspects that things have come down from the peak of the market, he feels confident that the high end remains strong. “There’s still money in the hobby,” he assures us. By way of example, he relates the story of a picker who paid $56,000 in cash for a set of cars the day before. “The guy he bought them for will part them out on eBay a few pieces at a time and will probably gross around $80,000.”

But even in this acquisitive environment we uncover another sentiment, one based less on picking, parting, or killing and more on affection. “When I’m looking for a car,” long-haired, longtime L.A. collector Mark Randall says, “I’m attracted first to what’s pretty. It’s like a girl. You see her across a room and you know you like her, but the person next to you might have a totally different opinion.” He opens a small padded case. Inside is evidence of his passionate obsession: a rainbow of pristine, loose “Heavy Chevys”—a rodded-out, first-generation Camaro. “Which one catches your eye?” he asks. We point to a spotless, olive-green F-body, a color we believe few others would find pretty. But Randall smiles, generously. “You have excellent taste,” he says, nodding like a sensei. “That’s the most desirable color for this casting.”

This obsessiveness runs even deeper among customizers, the fastest-growing segment of the hobby. These folks spend days chopping, welding, and painting these tiny cars, just for fun and show. Generosity is another hallmark of this sub-subculture. When customizers meet at conventions, their signature act is to give away a car they’ve decorated, an object and action they call a random act of kindness. “We’ll leave here with 100 cars,” Chicago customizer Brian Thorby says, introducing his wife and two young sons. “Guys in the rooms will see the kids and just let them pick out a car for free.” Why this outpouring of benevolence? Biological imperative. “They’ve got to keep the kids in it,” Thorby says. “It perpetuates the hobby.”

Intrigued by this statement, we follow Thorby’s sons briefly as they explore the convention floor. They lead us to one of their favorite features: a glass-fronted machine near the merchandise room, about the size and shape of an average household aquarium. We watch as they feed a Hot Wheels car into a hole in its side. The car rolls down a ramp and stops on a platform. Then, the boys push a button, and a heavy steel press descends, crushing the toy into a flattened disc of plastic and metal. The young perpetuators of the hobby squeal with delight.

We finally locate the collectors’ collective heart at a meeting of the Blister Pack Liberation Army. This group formed about 10 years ago and is coÂ­ordiÂ­nated by childhood car hoarder Fletcher. The gathering is ad hoc and surreptitious—occurring off the convention’s agenda, at 11 p.m., outside the hotel’s shuttered ballrooms—but is open to anyone who brings a classic redline, still in its original 40-year-old package. (Such a seal multiplies a car’s value three to ten times.)

Fletcher tells the 20 or so persons gathered there: “Introduce yourselves by answering two questions: Which cars did you give away as a kid, and why?”

The Liberators take turns presenting. While nearly all of them have a heartwarming tale of receiving a car—from a beloved grandma, from a resentful sibling, from a friend at a convention—being innate collectors, few have stories of giving one away, even as children. Their anecdotes also Â­poignantly reveal the Liberators’ distance from the toys’ elemental nature. “The last time I opened a blister pack,” Belzberg confesses, “was in 1969.”

Finally, each holds up his or her tiny package. Onlookers cringe and shout offers to buy them, intact. But every member liberates each little car from its brittle prison—though they all do so with care, like a bride opening wedding gifts.

And as they linger and chat afterwards, they share a vital, if hermetic, camaraderie, as if they’ve been liberated as well, freed to revel in the cars’ innocent joys.

“Everyone thinks we’re stupid, taking a valuable package and ripping it open.” Fletcher says, standing behind a table littered with cardboard and yellowed plastic. “But we spend five days here trading cars for money, looking for the perfect piece. This event is about reminding ourselves that these cars weren’t perfect, even right out of the package. It’s about having a beautiful thing that you can touch and hold rather than just value.” He rolls a car in his hand, studying it beatifically. “It changes your relationship to a car. It becomes yours.”